Watched about 1/2 dozen zombie flicks this past week. Seem to me once they bite someone they are going to change fast depending on the virus spreads so Zombies get pretty picky and move on to the next live fleash feast. Were are the Brains? only in the pages of miniature rules?

In that movie, one of the zombies (yes, they interrogate a zombie) says that they crave brains because being dead hurts, they can feel themselves rotting and it hurts, and something in victims' brains relieves the pain temporarily.

Another victim, as he's slowly changing into a zombie, says he can smell his uninfected girlfriend's brain, and it smells sooooo good.

A few other zombie movies have picked up on that, too, but the vast majority of movies, books, stories, comics, etc., don't specify the brain as the target of zombie lust.

The length of time from bite to zedness seems to vary with the movie. In Dawn of the Dead, it seemed to be longer (the girlfriend and the guy who was bitten at the end), but Andy the gunstore owner and the woman's husband at the beginning changed pretty quick. In Walking Dead, it looks pretty quick (minutes). In 28 Days Later, it was very fast (less than a minute).

I've been watching the 1st and 2nd seasons of The Walking Dead, and the explanation in that series is that the virus has a varying rate of change. Some may take hours, such as Amy in the first season, but in other cases the change is very rapid as with Shane in the last episode, season 2. The doc at CDC admits he can't explain this.

Brains are almost never mentioned in the zombie movies. I can only think of one movie where the zombies were after brains and it involved alien life that went after the brain, but there was no biting or eating people.

According to the Zombie Handbook (The handbook given to all zombies) certain parts of the human anatomy provide more nutritional value to the zombie as far as remaining animated. The brain is at the top of the pyramid, with various other organs on down to blood and extremities. It is more a matter of keeping the virus fueled than with feeding the zombie. A lack of fuel for the virus will send it into a hybernation like state until another food source is detected. Thus in season one of Walking Dead when the Sheriff enters Atlanta and the zombies start to "wake up" from the bus and other parts of the city.

Infection rate depends on a number of factors, including the type of virus involved. There are 4 broad catagories of zombie virus we have identified at CDC (Yes we really do talk about this stuff here, sometimes), including Rage (fast zombies), Morningstar (Combination), Engineered (Umbrella Corp), and Classic (Slow), not including parasitic zombie infection involving another higher organism taking control or causing zombie like behavior (See the stories on zombie bees).

You reminded me of that wonderful B movie, Night of the Creeps. It had everything: alien parasites, college cheerleaders, college cheerleader zombies, college cheerleader with a flamethrower, zombie cats. Man, I gotta see that again.

in regards to the walking dead, Shane I thought showed that they were all infected with or without a bite. Like the scene where they find the policemen zombies, and they comment there were no bites on them.

vojvoda: I cant pm and i posted awhile ago about getting a color chart conversion chart for cheap craft paints, and u said u ahd one u just had to find it? Did u ever?

mindfad, you are correct. What I was talking about was the scene where Shane is killed by Rick and resurrects after a few minutes, while Andrea's sister is bitten and dies to resurrect what seems like hours, or at least an hour later.